If you’re impressed by how quickly I wrote this post, don’t be. After my post about Prague my sister called and said she read it, then asked, “How many months will I have to wait until the next one?” So this isn’t timely blogging, it’s just a form of sibling vengeance. Also I just got an email that school is cancelled tomorrow due to extreme cold, so I have one more day of winter break!!

That being said, as I mentioned in my post on Prague, Brona and I went to Terezin, a town with a concentration camp. I forgot to mention it before, but the fact that a WWII concentration camp was nearby was also a reason why I chose to go to Prague. I knew I wanted to see a concentration camp while I was in Europe, and I wasn’t picky about which one; when I was deciding where to go on my last trip, I created a Google map with pins on all the possible places I could go, including the concentration camps that are open for visitors. I didn’t really want to go to Poland and I was pretty much all Germany-ed out, so when the possibility of going to Prague came up I jumped on it.

Side note: when I was planning my trip a lot of people were like, “You want to go to a concentration camp? That’s…cheerful.” Well, no, it’s not, dummkopf. I’m not going for a pick-me-up; I’m going because it’s an important part of our history, one that shouldn’t be forgotten, and I wanted to experience it firsthand while I had the chance. It was for the same reasons that I went to the Caen Memorial Museum, and the D-Day beaches, and the American cemetery, and Anne Frank’s house. It was a very WWII-rich year for me.

Okay, so anyway. Brona and I caught the 4:30 AM train back to Prague from Podebrady, then crashed for just a few hours at her apartment, managing to wake up, get ready, and make it to the bus depot before 10:30. We walked around for a few minutes looking for the platform listed on our tickets, then began to panic when we couldn’t find it and the clock crept closer to 10:30. Because it was a Sunday, there was no one working, and the guy at the newspaper stand there was none too keen on helping two English-speaking girls. We even found two other people who were looking to go to Terezin, but they had no idea where the bus stop was either so they ended up going to the zoo instead. I’m sure it was a more uplifting day, anyway.

All right, it’s been awhile, so let’s recap a bit. After I got done teaching in April, I had about two and a half weeks to travel around before heading back home. I chose to go four places: Barcelona, Amsterdam, Prague, and Vienna. There were two main reasons I chose to go to Prague: several people suggested it on my Facebook status asking for advice, and my friend Brona from the UK was living there! She was actually my resident when I was an RA on the International Floor at ISU and invited me to come stay with her. Umm, sold!

WHOA it’s been forever since I’ve been on the blog. Time to get back into the swing of things. I am currently working on a post about my trip to Prague–I swear I am–but in the meantime, a short little post!

First of all, current assistants who read here, how’s it going?? If I remember correctly you’re probably about in the middle of your two week break right now. Did you all find a place to live? How’s school going? Are you traveling right now?

Secondly, a quick update on my life. Since I returned from France I interviewed at three different schools, applied at three different temp agencies, got a teaching job AND a temp summer job, moved out of my parents’ house into my own rental house, and started working full time teaching English, French, and ESL at a local high school! I’m loving it. At some point I might do a photo recap of my summer, but who knows if I’ll ever get to that point.

My poor little blog has been neglected lately. I’ve managed to get out a few posts this summer, but slow Internet (not anymore though!!), busyness, life events, and quite frankly, a lost desire to blog have led to many fewer posts than what I would like. However, I do want to finish out this blog since it’s a commitment I made to myself (I want to get it printed into a book as a memento), my family and friends, and future assistants who have been reading it to get helpful information.

I started my teaching job today–eek!!–and I have no doubt I am going to have much less time and going to be much more stressed. But I definitely have at least a few more posts that I want to get out, so I’m going to do my best, although I make no promises as to when I’ll finish. Maybe I won’t finish up until my two-week break at the beginning of October… who knows?

If you are going to be participating in TAPIF this coming year, feel free to comment with any questions you have, and I’ll be able to respond to them quickly. Also, if you have any ideas for blog posts that would be helpful, I might even find the time to get a few more of those out.

The posts I’m planning on writing yet are:

my trip to Prague

my trip to Vienna

pictures from my last few months in Nice

I also have some posts already written and saved as drafts, so a few random, where-did-that-come-from posts might be sprinkled in there as well. And who knows, maybe I’ll get bitten by the blogging bug again and will do a bunch before I say sayonara… I guess time will tell.

You miss me? I’ve definitely missed writing on the blog, but have been having lots of fun and keeping busy in my time not spent blogging. I could list all the things I’ve been doing but I’ll just get right back into it.

I finished teaching on April 12, then the next day I flew to Barcelona to spend a few days. I wasn’t expecting to like Spain very much; I’m not really sure why, other than the fact that I speak NO Spanish/Catalan and not speaking the native language of a place generally bugs me. However, I absolutely LOVED Barcelona. The weather was beautiful, there was unique architecture that I really liked, there were lots of cool things to see, there seemed to be a lot of nature within the city, and I found a lot of lookout points over the city, which is one of my favorite things. Also, sangria.

In addition, the people were very different from the French; they seemed more like Americans to me, but of course had their own uniqueness as well. Most people I had to talk to spoke English fairly well, there were more overweight people (Murrica) and they seemed to dress more like Americans than the French, and they spoke loudly and seemed very friendly. I think the combination of friendly people and beautiful weather gave the city a super strong vibe, which was rivaled only by Berlin in all the cities I visited. It felt like it was summer there already!

Okay, enough talking, let’s get to some photos. I’m going to try to cram the whole trip into one post… here goes!

A co-worker from my school and I had been talking all year about taking a trip to Eze, a small town not too far from Nice. As time goes, it flew by, and before we knew it I only had a couple more weeks of school! We planned to do it that week, but then rescheduled for the Thursday of my last week of school. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute! We didn’t have a ton of time, since I was having a good-bye dinner for all my friends at my apartment that evening (and it was scheduled to rain in mid-afternoon), but we left early afternoon and spent a good few hours seeing a few things in the town.

Eze is a really small medieval village on top of a mountain- it’s called a perched village since it’s up so high. If you take the train you have to walk up the mountain to get there, but if you take the bus or drive you can go right up to the city. Luckily, we drove, so no mountain climbing for me!

Wow, it’s been longer than I had planned since I last posted. Sorry!! You’d think being unemployed and all I’d be posting up a storm, but sadly, that doesn’t seem to have been the case. Here’s what I’ve been up to lately:

job applying (temp places for the summer and teaching jobs for the fall)

taking trips to Ankeny to first see my very pregnant sister, and then my new baby niece!!

cleaning my room and bathroom at home from top to bottom, and donating tons of stuff

sorting, organizing, and backing up the millions of photos I took this year

enjoying living 25 miles from my boyfriend instead of 5000

eating delicious meals at my grandparents’

catching up with friends that I haven’t seen for nearly eight months

playing my dad in backgammon, and mostly losing

trying to catch our five baby kittens that live under the front steps

feeding our four bucket calves (and chasing them when moving them to a different field…)

I went skiing twice this year, once in mid-March and once at the beginning of April. That’s right, skiing in April in the south of France! And thus is the magic of mountains. The first time, I went to a ski resort called Valberg, and the second, to one called Isola 2000. Here’s a handy-dandy map I created to show you people where I was:

The one near Peone is Valberg, and the one that’s 34 miles away is Isola.

That’s right, I went back to Mont Boron! I hadn’t gone up the hill with beautiful views overlooking Nice since back in October. I guess like with my twovisits to Villefranche, it needed revisited before I left! I considered putting the pictures from the day in with my Haut-de-Cagnes post, but I decided two short-and-sweet ones would be nice after my massive post about Toulouse🙂

One warm and sunny day Sam (Notice a pattern? He’s a good friend, haha) and I decided to go up to Mont Boron, since I had never seen the fortress up there. Honestly it’s not much to look at, but the views of the city below are AMAZING. I miiight have amped up the color a little too much on some of these pictures, but they’re just so pretty!